Saturday, September 29, 2012

One advantage of our Buenos
Aires apartment is that, in Palermo,
it has access to some of the city’s biggest open spaces. We are just minutes
from the sprawling Parque
3 de Febrero, and even closer to the Jardín Zoológico (city zoo) and the
Jardín Botánico, the
classic botanical gardens designed by French landscape architect Charles Thays (pictured above).
In a neighborhood where our nine-story building is one of the smaller
structures, the availability of green areas contrasts dramatically with densely
built areas like the traditional Microcentro,
where constructions of lesser or greater antiquity cover virtually ever square
foot.

Nevertheless, those open spaces have some shortcomings. Maintenance
of the lawns and trees is less than perfect (though better than in many other
parts of town). The worst drawback,
though, is the infestation of feral felines in the Jardín Botánico where, said a source that I can’t locate at present, more than 200 ownerless cats
survive on seven hectares. It’s not the only place where Porteños abandon kittens
that, as fast-growing adults, kill birds that frequent the grounds, but it’s
the most conspicuous one.

The problems go beyond that, however, as uncontrolled cats are also a
public health hazard. Adjacent to the Botánico, Plaza Intendente Casares (pictured above) is
another public park where the clawed creatures sneak through the fences to roam
at night and, until recently, they used the sandy playground, where children frolicked
in the daytime, as a litter box. Fortunately, since a recent remodel, a
cat-proof fence now surrounds that playground.

According to a recent article in the city daily Clarín, there
are more
than 100,000 orphan dogs and cats in Buenos Aires. This led Ina Bancalari,
president of the Sociedad Protectora de Animales Sarmiento (an animal shelter),
to comment that “If one of every 30 of the
city’s three million inhabitants adopted one, there would be no homeless
animals.”

In our neighborhood, street dogs are no problem, though
thoughtless dog owners often leave the sidewalk splattered with canine soretes.
The city’s paseaperros (dog walkers) are often more responsible in this regard
than the apartment dwellers whose dogs they exercise.

As a dog owner and lover myself, I usually carry a plastic
bag or two with me and, when I see someone’s purebred defecating on the
sidewalk, I smilingly hand them one with a polite “Se te cayó algo” (“You
dropped something”). Usually they get the point.

In other parts of the city, street dogs can be an issue, but
in Palermo it’s almost exclusively cats. I have my doubts that either adoption
or the “solution” of neutering them and returning them to their point of
capture, so often suggested in the United States, will be anywhere near
sufficient to solve the problem.

Tango by the River

As announced recently,
there’s been a postponement of my digital slide lecture on Buenos Aires at Tango by the River in Sacramento, which will now take place Friday, October 26th, at 6 p.m.

Limited to a maximum
of 50 people, the event will also include tango performances; admission costs
$10 at the door, or $8 in advance. I have spoken here several times before, and
we always sell out, so plan in advance. Signed copies of my Moon Handbooks on Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile and Patagonia will be available at discount prices.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

By consensus, state-run Aerolíneas
Argentinas is a disaster for its shoddy service, inability to keep its
schedules, and propensity to hemorrhage money. After its renationalization in
2008, it came under the dubious control of the Peronist youth wing La Cámpora and, by all
accounts, things have just gotten worse, with losses averaging upwards of US$1
million daily.

When counseling potential visitors about travel to
Argentina, I tell them to avoid Aerolíneas whenever possible, in favor of LAN Argentina, the local
affiliate of Chile’s LAN Airlines. Unfortunately,
LAN has fewer planes and flights and, despite the company’s desire to expand
its services, it will not be able to do so. That’s because, according
to the Buenos Aires daily La Nación, the Administración Nacional de
Aviación Civil (Civil Aviation Administration) has rejected LAN’s request to
add a new Airbus 320 that would have allowed the airline to expand its
Patagonian routes.

Given the current government’s extreme protectionism, its
rejection of LAN isn’t exactly startling, but it comes at great cost. The
country loses a US$40 million investment that would have improved and expanded
air services for Argentines and visitors alike, and created a number of
permanent jobs. Anonymous sources quoted by La Nación suggest that the
government was worried that LAN would take business away from Aerolíneas.

In a sense, such worries are legitimate. LAN is an exemplary
airline, even as it endures the difficulties of operating under an often
capricious Argentine political and economic system. Aerolíneas, on the other
hand, embodies that very capriciousness and, on a level playing field, is
probably incapable of competing with LAN.

That’s because, said Mujica as quoted
in Saturday’s Buenos Aires Herald, “Argentines are champions when it comes
to taking dollars abroad! World champions!” despite the restrictions.
“Argentines distrust their currency, save in dollars and somehow manage to make
it.” Whether the Argentine government shares Mujica’s admiration for its
cleverly evasive citizens is doubtful.

Tango by the River

As announced the
other day, there’s been a postponement of my digital slide lecture on Buenos Aires at Tango by the River in Sacramento, which will now take place Friday, October 26th, at 6 p.m.

Limited to a maximum
of 50 people, the event will also include tango performances; admission costs
$10 at the door, or $8 in advance. I have spoken here several times before, and
we always sell out, so plan in advance. Signed copies of my Moon Handbooks on Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile and Patagonia will be available at discount prices.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Once, in a conversation with Buenos Aires Herald restaurant critic
Dereck Foster, I told him that I sometimes liked to get takeaway sushi for
dinner. Dereck, an Anglo-Argentine who’s been doing this for more than half a
century, needled me with the admonition that sushi should always been fresh, so
I had to explain myself in greater detail.

To get my sushi, I went to a wonderful restaurant called
Libélula, barely a block from home. Libélula, which later moved and has since closed,
was in fact a pioneer Peruvian restaurant, but it had an extensive sushi menu
that owed its origins to a small but influential
wave of Japanese immigration to Perú that began in 1899 (though most
Peruvians might like to forget the corrupt and dictatorial
presidency of Alberto Fujimori. It’s worth adding that Argentina has its
own history of Japanese immigration, most visible in and around the Buenos
Aires suburb of Belén de Escobar, known as the Capital Nacional
de la Flor (National Flower Capital), partly because of its Japanese
horticultural tradition.

In any event, at Libélula, I would take a seat at the bar
and nurse a pisco sour while the sushi chef – of clear Japanese descent –
prepared my dinner. Then, when all was ready, I would pay the bill, tip the
bartender, and walk home to enjoy a solitary sushifest before sitting down at
the computer to update the day’s information to the new edition of MoonHandbooks Buenos Aires. In doing so, I saved both money and time.

Libélula is sadly gone, but Peruvian cuisine – perhaps the
most diverse and flavorful on the entire South American continent - is
flourishing in the city. It ranges from plain and inexpensive eateries such as
Monserrat’s Status,
which gets a genuinely Peruvian crowd, to midrange to upscale Palermo restaurants such as Bardot and some elite options. The
truly elite option is Astrid
y Gastón, which opened in our neighborhood shortly after Libélula closed.

In reality, Astrid & Gastón is now a small empire of
restaurants that started in Lima with now celebrity chef Gastón Acurio and his
wife Astrid. It’s since expanded to several other Latin American capitals,
including Santiago and Mexico City, and even Madrid, without losing its flavors
and elegance. I’ve been to the Buenos Aires locale only once, for a brief
lunch, but my wife María Laura went for dinner with a friend last week to enjoy
dishes such as cebiche con leche de pantera (ceviche with squid ink, pictured above), a
flavorful mix that includes fresh fish, shrimp, scallops, sweet potato and red
onions. That was a starter, but the main dishes included arroz con pato
(braised duck and rice, pictured below) and pescado con salsa huacatay (catch of the day, with a
sweet and sour sauce). For the two of them, with appetizers, pisco sours and
wine, the hit came to around US$150, so this is not a budget choice.

Sadly, Peruvian food has not made a major impact in the
United States. A couple weeks ago we heard of a new place that opened
in Berkeley but, on arrival, we learned that it specialized in barbecue chicken
(which, though it’s popular in in Peru, was not the seafood or ají de gallina
we’d been hoping for). On the other hand, Acurio has opened up a separate
gourmet chain called La
Mar Cebichería Peruana, which has branches in New York and San Francisco,
so diners in those cities can now sample gourmet Peruvian food, focused on
fish, ceviche and sushi. We’ve not gone there yet, but we do enjoy San
Francisco’s Destino.

Even in other South American countries, Peruvian food doesn’t
make it much outside the capital cities. Oddly enough, I’ve never seen it in
Uruguay, but it’s a bit more prevalent in Chile, which has seen substantial
Peruvian immigration over the past decades. That’s a topic for another day,
though.

Tango by the River

As announced the
other day, there’s been a postponement of my digital slide lecture on Buenos Aires at Tango by the River in Sacramento, which will now take place Friday, October 26th, at 6 p.m.

Limited to a maximum
of 50 people, the event will also include tango performances; admission costs
$10 at the door, or $8 in advance. I have spoken here several times before, and
we always sell out, so plan in advance. Signed copies of my Moon Handbooks on Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile and Patagonia will be available at discount prices.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Once a year or so, The New York Times travel section
condescends to publish a Latin American issue, devoting its 12 pages to a
region that, south of Mexico and parts of the Caribbean, gets barely a mention
the rest of the year. Last Sunday’s edition features a photo
essay on Santiago’s newly fashionable Barrio Italia, an area that also
includes the Museo
Frei and Puerto Perú, one of my favorite
restaurants in the city (I’m planning a future post about Peruvian food).

It also includes a longer
article on Pichilemu, the Chilean
surfing capital that's just a short drive from the Colchagua
wine district. That’s good as far as it goes, but author Ondine Cohane stumbles
when she inexplicably refers to Chilean horsemen as “gauchos” when she attends
a local rodeo. “Gaucho” is properly River Plate Spanish (Argentina, Uruguay,
Paraguay and Brazil, where it’s gaúcho). It’s also used in southernmost Chilean
Patagonia but, in the Chilean heartland, her “gauchos wearing different striped
tunics” are in fact huasos
dressed in ponchos, and she fails to identify the traditional dance she views
as the cueca, the staple of
Chilean folklore (as depicted in the 19th-century painting below). It’s not surprising that Cohane, an editor with the
Euro-centric Condé Nast Traveler, might oversimplify regional details, but the
Times’s own fact-checkers clearly failed here.

Romney Nui

Recently, I wrote a post about Chilean
icons in the current US presidential elections that included a New
Yorker cartoon caption contest that caricatured the current opposition
nominee as the face of the stationary moai of Easter Island (known as Rapa Nui to
its Polynesian residents). The link in the previous sentence will take you to
three wryly clever reader-submitted captions, with a choice to
vote for one. I’ve made my choice and, when the winner is announced next week,
we’ll see if other readers agree with me.

Tango by the River - Postponed

As announced
earlier, I will give a digital slide lecture on Buenos Aires at Tango by the River in Sacramento, but illness (not mine) has postponed the event. It will now take place Friday, October 26th.

Limited to a maximum
of 50 people, the event will also include tango performances; admission costs
$10 at the door, or $8 in advance. I have spoken here several times before, and
we always sell out, so plan in advance. Signed copies of my Moon Handbooks on Argentina, Buenos Aires, Chile and Patagonia will be available at discount prices.

Argentina Travel Adventures App

With more than 30 years living and traveling in Latin America, I write guidebooks to the "Southern Cone" countries - so called because of their shape on the map - of Chile and Argentina. I'm especially interested in the remote, scenic Patagonian region overlapping the two countries. I am the sole author of Moon Handbooks to Argentina; Chile & Easter Island; Buenos Aires, including the city's hinterland and coastal Uruguay; and Patagonia, including the Falkland Islands.
I have a PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley, and have done research in Peru, Chile, Argentina and the Falklands, where I spent a year as a Fulbright-Hays scholar.
My home base is Oakland, California, but I spend five months a year in southern South America. I often stay in Buenos Aires, where my Argentine wife and I have a second home, an apartment in the barrio of Palermo.
I speak fluent Spanish, less fluent German, serviceable Portuguese and desperation French.
Any questions, please contact me at southerncone (at) mac.com, or leave comments by clicking on the word "comment" at the bottom of each entry. Comments are moderated, but I get to them quickly.